Thursday, May 31, 2007

Young Son is finishing 3rd grade. As an end-of-the-year project, each student in his class is researching a person from the 1800's and writing a report on him/her. The culmination of the project will be the "wax museum" where the students dress as their character and give a presentation for the parents and other students in the school. Some of the characters being studied are Alexander Graham Bell, Wild Bill Hickock, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Elizabeth Blackwell. Young Son is researching Samuel Clemens AKA Mark Twain.

Along with gathering books for research I ordered a couple episodes of Star Trek: TNG Time's Arrow- parts 1and 2 (and the answer to your un-asked question is "yes, I am a closet trekkie"). Anyway- the story involves the crew of the Enterprise traveling back in time to gold-rush era San Francisco where they meet Mark Twain. So, while watching Star Trek may not seem all that educational- it was a good way for Young Son to get some ideas of how Mark Twain might have looked, dressed and talked. After watching the episode we talked about Mark Twain's trademark white suit and cigar- which led us to "the white suit search"...

You might think it would be easy to find a white suit to fit a 10 year old boy, but you would be wrong. It seems that white suits are not really in style right now, and while I could rent one for $100 from the Men's Wearhouse- I'm really more interested in buying one from Goodwill... A good friend suggested that I try Craig's List, and I have a few more thrift stores that I can try. I have one more week left- wish me luck!

Postscript- I found a white, polyester suit jacket at Salvation Army that will work perfectly- best of all it only cost $3.00! It fits almost perfectly- I only need to shorten the sleeves. We'll proabably alter a pair of boys baseball pants (same fabric and color) to go with it. Add a white dress shirt, black riboon for a string tie, and a mustache and he's all set!